Students blast ASEAN meeting

Students blast ASEAN meeting

BANGKOK (AFP): A Myanmarese student group yesterday blasted
Thailand's invitation to Myanmar to attend the ASEAN foreign
ministers meeting here next week, but said it would not do
anything violent to disrupt the conference.

Rumors that the dissidents would launch bombings or other
terrorists attacks during the July 22-27 conference "are
completely false," the All Burma Students' Democratic Front
(ABSDF) said in a statement.

It said two senior ABSDF members stopped by Thai soldiers near
the border recently were interrogated twice and "coerced" into
confessing to "an alleged 'bomb blast attack' at the forthcoming
ASEAN meeting."

This may have been an attempt to find a scapegoat for anything
that goes wrong at the meeting or to discredit the ABSDF in the
eyes of the people and the ASEAN governments, it said.